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June 24, 2013

Committee throws data retention decision back to government
If ISPs are required to keep the data, it should be mandatory that the data is encrypted, and the data should not be kept for more than two years. The government should shoulder the costs for providers to keep this service, the committee said. Should the government go ahead with the scheme, there should also be an oversight committee and annual reports on the scheme submitted to parliament, the committee has recommended.

Dresner’s Point: Put Your Business Intelligence Results Under the Microscope
The discipline of creating and agreeing on the metrics and aligning them to goals is probably 80 percent of the work. But that discipline leads to great value. It’s hard work and often complicated in a corporate culture. But it’s the committed who succeed at BI, and the rewards in competitive advantages can be huge.

Reference Architecture - Auto-scaling Moodle deployment on AWS
Moodle deployments on AWS can be configured to automatically scale up and down seamlessly to meet the highs and lows in the demand curve in the most optimum and cost-effective manner. This post presents reference architecture for deploying Moodle Learning Management System over AWS Cloud to achieve high levels of Performance, Scalability, Availability, Security and Reliability.

Disruptions: Medicine That Monitors You“You will — voluntarily, I might add — take a pill, which you think of as a pill but is in fact a microscopic robot, which will monitor your systems” and wirelessly transmit what is happening, Eric E. Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, said last fall at a company conference. “If it makes the difference between health and death, you’re going to want this thing.”

Cyber-retaliation: How security is becoming a priority for the Middle EastThe amount of money spent on IT security is growing at 15 percent a year, IDC said, and in some cases, companies are spending big to protect their networks. Last year, MEED reported that the major national oil companies in the Middle East spend around $10m annually to secure their systems. Security is high on the minds of IT professionals in the region and attitudes are hardening.

Microsoft services agreement changes: What other enterprises can learnGoogle got into trouble with recent changes to its policies regarding the handling of user information, and now Microsoft seems to have caused some concern with similar changes. Should enterprises be concerned with Microsoft's new user information policies? Are there any lessons to be learned for enterprises on how to state exactly what data they collect?

Wearable Computing Will Turn The Concept Of Big Data On Its HeadConsider the impact of health professionals wearing Google Glass to document illnesses just by looking at a patient. The benefits for the individual patient could be significant, life-saving even. But the societal benefit of this collective knowledge could be life-changing. Yet it would only be made possible through gathering data in the first place.

Microsoft wants to patent gestures inside cars … no, not that kindA newly surfaced patent application from three Microsoft researchers outlines a system for interacting with a vehicle’s information and entertainment system using a variety of gestures, such as a finger to the lips for turning down the audio volume, a thumbs-up to approve an action, or a pinch of the chin — a “quizzical pose,” as the filing puts it — to conduct an Internet search. Another example: The user “can make a movement that mimics placing a phone near an ear” to instruct the mobile device to place a call.

Microsoft Expected To Offer Oracle 12c On Azure Cloud“Next week, we will be announcing technology partnerships with the most important SaaS companies and infrastructure companies in the cloud,” Ellison promised last week. “And they will be committing to our technology for years to come.” Ellison said 12c would be the ”foundation of a modern cloud” and, since Salesforce and Netsuite already use Oracle databases, adding the new 12c version is not a big stretch for them. It merely adds technology more suited to the multi-tenant cloud model where they operate.

IT Hiccups of the Week: Southwest Airlines Computer Failure Grounded All FlightsThe computer failure, a Southwest spokesperson told the AP, “impaired the airline's ability to do such things as conduct check-ins, print boarding passes and monitor the weight of each aircraft.” Planes on the taxiways were recalled to the terminals although planes in flight were unaffected. The airline was able to get its back-up system operational, although the system's performance was said to be “sluggish.”

Quote for the day:"Being present means being present with your heart and your mind, listening intentionally, without an agenda, judgment or expectations." -- Tweet by @ReinaBach